No Two Clients Are Alike

As a mom and a business owner I learn a lot from parenting that helps me in my business. I have two very different little boys and I have had to adjust my thinking about how to raise children. No two children are alike. My oldest, Ryder, who is eight, is gentle, nurturing and has an innate ability to see the bigger picture. Dax, my 5-year-old, is an artist through and through. Emotional, sensitive yet very intense. I’ve had to really step back and see my boys from a place of full presence and not fit them into a structure I found in books, approaches or guidelines. In other words, I still have to be and do my parenting.

As any parent knows, understanding is one of the most important pieces to parenting. If you don’t understand your children, you won’t be able to “stand” your child.

In business, no two clients are alike. Any cookie cutter approach or system out there can tell you to do “these steps and it’s a no fail”. I say, that’s a fast way to poor results. If you do not understand your client you won’t be able to stand them. Conversely, they won’t be able to stand you and you are going to have a lot of unhappy clients or none at all.

You must understand your client and their unique needs, what drives them, what specific fears, beliefs or lack of skills might be stopping them. If you communicate in a way that’s like a robot or a script not your own – no matter how much you’ve rehearsed or practiced, you aren’t fully present – not with yourself, not for your client. I can guarantee full understanding will be missing.

Last week I was working with a client who had a challenge around clearly communicating during enrollment conversations. I knew she was following the script of a competent and successful business coach but she hadn’t “made it her own”. As an actress I am very much an advocate of living truthfully even in imaginary circumstances and I teach this to my clients. We don’t need anymore talking heads. We need hearts opening and communicating their truth.

What I felt was intriguing and what she experienced was a breakthrough that led to her landing her first major client with a huge success story from the client just from the enrollment conversation alone.

Here’s what I coached her on: I knew the best way I could help her was to “ACT” as a real client so I could actually “FEEL” how it went rather than think and analyze the process. When she was following the script I felt a break/cut in our connection and as a result the understanding diminished. I felt less interested in what she had to offer and actually confused by the words she was saying and in her ability to help me and my desire to hire her, when moments before had genuinely been there.

I felt myself really wanting her services when she was fully connected with me, listening to me, coaching me, directing me from her grounded and authentic place as her unique genius, her blessed gift and talent as a coach. It happened each time she went back to the “script”. I could feel the disconnection. I could feel the break in understanding. Even though she was word for word of a “masterly” written script. I could feel myself getting distracted. As I expressed this to my client we were able to tweak and work through this in order to refine her enrollment conversations. By the end of the session, she was laughing and excited about doing what she does best, connecting!

Every time I work with a client I gain so much more understanding. It is so important to fully understand our own truth, know our own unique voice and from a confident present place, listen, observe and respond. Only then will you truly understand the person in front of you, whether it is your child, your client or yourself! That’s what I like to call stepping on to Your Center Stage.

To get you started you can get my “really beautiful”, “great content” free guide, The 4 Key Communication Cornerstones at http://www.stephanajohnson.com